It's always tough to express an opinion that inevitably boils down to, "meh." It's easy to describe frustration and equally simplistic to convey elation — but when a game just doesn't evoke any strong feelings one way or another, significant points blend into a background of generic button-pushing. Capcom vs. SNK Card Fighters was very much this type of game for me, so I'm going to do my best to focus on the major points — but please bear in mind that this game left me, in essence, vaguely satisfied.

In my mind, there are several real areas of note in this game. As always, it is important to consider the look and sound quality. Then we get to the whole collectible aspect, where one chases cards and tries to improve battling options. There's the metagame, which involves climbing a tower and defending card-fighters everywhere, and there's the ACTUAL game of card-fighting. Lastly, there are some miscellaneous points of interest, and they can be doozies!

OK, first is look and feel. I'll start with the positive: I liked the card art. The pictures were bright and colorful, and I thought them very much in-style for the characters they were supposed to represent. Since you stare at cards for 75 percent of this game, that's a big positive! The look of the game when you're not involved in a battle wasn't particularly great — but it's not bad considering it's a handheld title. The people hanging out in and around the tower you're climbing DO look like little people, and that's about the extent of it, so there's not much room for good OR bad. Sound was well-rendered, but there just aren't enough noises in game to keep from getting a bit repetitive. Music loops a bit more than I'd like, and when combined with the sound — I tended to play with the sound off. Graphics are limited in scale and greatly superseded by the previously mentioned artwork when considering the appearance of the game. In short, this whole section gets a big Lisa Simpson "meh!"

Let's move onwards and upward, tackling the issue of the card game itself. This one's tricky, because I didn't get to play against other PEOPLE. So now, it's like I'm reviewing a chess program. How much of a chess review is the computer's skill and play style, and how much reflects on the game of chess itself? Same thing here. The card-battling system ITSELF seems fine, but that system doesn't exactly get a vigorous stress test because the computer artificial intelligence doesn't really seem to "get it." Is my impression more a reflection of the SYSTEM or of the AI opponent?

The card battles break down vaguely like this:

1. You may have action points that come in various colors;
2. You spend these action points to play appropriately colored cards or to activate abilities that cards may possess;
3. When your turn starts up, you'll gain action points based on the number of cards you have in play, and what color they are; and
4. Win by attacking and killing your opponent. This, in turn, is accomplished by attacking and killing his cards.

At the MOST basic level, that's it. Getting slightly more complex, cards appear to have balancing strengths and weaknesses. Powerful cards may take a fortune in action points to activate. Weak cards may die easily but generate you tons of action points. Cards may have situationally useful special abilities that can piggyback each other for big wins. That sort of thing. Some are innovative; most are mechanically sound; but the majority are generically uninspired.

Is the game GOOD?

I dunno, I guess it's fine. Strategy seems fairly straightforward at the level of card-power that I reached, and it seems to escape the computer opponent, resulting in a fairly uninspiring situation where the player "goes through the motions" in many battles yet spanks the computer for another win. Unless you're REALLY driven to collect money for cards, this removes the luster from the card battles fairly quickly. This leads me right into the metagame!

OK, so there's an evil computer at the top of this tower where card battlers from all over the world come to, well, do battle. The computer brainwashes all the card battlers and sets up its very own evil lair on the top floor of card-battle-tower-central. You and your buddy are unaffected. So to save the world, you have to climb the tower and defeat the insane mechanical overlord. In classic Scooby-Doo fashion, you decide to split up. One of you will ascend one side of the tower, and one will take the other. In game terms, this means that you have to climb one side of the tower for each segment you tackle. Sometimes it makes things easier if you climb one side or the other, but in most cases, you can just flip a coin. Sometimes you get gimmick opponents or floors. You may have to wager a pack of cards to battle them; you may have to trade them certain cards for the right to pick a battle ... things like this.

These special battles are in no way special BEYOND this random requirement, so it's a clear and cheap mechanic to generate more "gameplay." The scavenger hunt CAN be fun, but it's a fairly disappointing trick for the designers to pull — so really, the card battle itself and the metagame that sets up those card battles average to a resounding "meh."

With all of this card battling, someone has to sense a business opportunity, right? There has to be someone SELLING these cards! Of course there is. In fact, there's a card merchant hanging out on the bottom floor of the zombiefied card tower, and he's more interested in your cash than in any card-battler computer schemes. He'll sell you booster packs of cards — or single cards that are more likely to be "high value." On this floor, you'll get cards from both the Capcom and SNK worlds, but many shops in other parts of the tower will specialize in one or the other. This limit in inventory is often the only significant difference to consider when choosing which half of the card-battler tower to climb, and getting a shop that is more likely to sell you the cards needed in "scavenger hunts" can make life much easier.

Thing is, though, you don't really know what you'll wind up needing on any given floor, so you can't choose wisely. You either rely on luck, psychic visions, or you look at online FAQs and guides! So we know that we'll be buying cards, and we know that we may have to be buying LOTS of cards — but where does your cash come from? It comes from defeating the brainwashed card battlers wandering the halls, looking for opponents to challenge. In the early game, I found cash to be annoyingly scarce and required many battles to be able to buy card packs. Later on, however, I was able to spend, spend, spend with little care for fiscal responsibility.

Points of miscellany ...

The very beginning of the campaign is a bit frustrating. When you start, your cards SUCK. The computer has no such restrictions. Thusly, you see many early-on boss battles in which you feel like you're just outdecked. You go back and blow up a few peons for cash to buy cards, and once you're a few booster packs in, you can cream the first boss. Remember a moment ago, when I mentioned that money was scarce early on? Yeah ... that doesn't help in building toward the eventual creaming. So, is this sudden change of dynamic satisfying in any way? Not really. What was previously a frustrating matchup with overpointed cards is suddenly switched to an unfulfilling cakewalk against the guy that was beating on you ONLY because you had no chance.

It's also worthwhile to mention that the manual is poorly written or translated. In many cases, I had questions about a certain card mechanic, and the only place I could seek answers was online FAQs. Since I already was looking at them to find out which shops I needed to pass scavenger hunts, it was OK ... I had the bookmarks I needed!

The last point to make regarding this game is that there is a game-breaking bug on some cartridges. It is detailed at Wikipedia. Loosely, it involves a challenge that must be beaten to advance — yet inevitably crashes the game when accepted.

This review sounds very negative, and that is because there were many snags holding back a respectably fun card game. Between a shaky AI, a shifty economy and an emphasis on precognition when picking your route up the card tower, you'd expect me to pop the cartridge quickly and hurl if from my DS. Oddly, though, I persevered and even had some respectable fun. Maybe it was the fact that I always WANTED to play a card game regularly, and this gave me the ability to do so. Maybe I just liked beating up on the poor computer. Maybe I'm overly amused by flashing pictures of cards burning, shocking, shooting and crushing each other. It's hard to say, but I think the best indicator is card games in general. If you like 'em, you'll probably get a kick out of SNK v. Capcom Card Fighters. If not, I'd recommend steering clear.